Adam Trodd We always just called it The Lane. It was a path between two avenues in the same housing estate with cement bollards at either end. Beer cans, carrier bags and other detritus gathered in its corners and lay hugging the high garden walls at its edges. Animal waste too was deposited there to petrify and crumble; nobody Read more...
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Suzanne Ghadimi ‘Please,’ I said in desperation as I looked across the open bonnet of my car. It was 2.30am and we were in the garage. It was December and it was cold in Aberdeenshire. Colder than usual. ‘I just want to…’ ‘You have to stop!’ I begged. ‘…fix it,’ he said. He was leaning over the car engine, Read more...
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Rebecca Audrey Johnson Angela stood at the window, watching her daughter watching the chickens. She carefully rubbed a china plate clean. The girl had always been more like her father, not like Angela at all. And it was possibly her own doing, because from the first moment she’d clutched that delicate and infinitely precious living body to her chest, Read more...
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Tamsin Partington It was a quiet Sunday morning when bits of me began to fall off. I put that first finger on the kitchen worktop. It wobbled for a moment before rolling off and onto the floor. The worktop wasn’t level. I found my big toe from my right foot in my sock at bedtime. I supposed that I Read more...
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Niki Baker Having swallowed a bellyful of commuters, the steel serpent sighed to a halt somewhere in the depths of its underground domain as if it simply couldn’t summon the strength to carry on. The lights flickered out and for a moment the carriage was consumed by the darkness and silence of the tunnel. The returning lights illuminated one Read more...
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Lee Wright I walk about the platform, the early morning beginning to warm around me. The barriers come down but I can’t see the train coming. Tiffany takes my hand. ‘It’ll be alright,’ she says, ‘You wait and see.’ ‘Ever notice how long it takes the train to get here, after the barriers come down?’ I say. Tiffany has come Read more...
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Emma Franieczek I had hoped – selfishly I’ll admit – that after her death, he would be able to forget her. This, however, was not the case. I sit beside him now, a stone’s throw away from Land’s End, on a makeshift wooden bench. Soft and brown, the bark having peeled off long ago; leaving behind a smooth surface. Read more...
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Brindley Hallam Dennis The rich always die last, the old man croaked. His voice whipped away, swept across the white scoured snow-surface of the plain. Friend leaned forward trying to catch the tail end of his words. The man’s eyes were black, yellowing skin around them, red patches on his cheeks. Piss-holes in the snow, Friend thought. And hard Read more...
